Introduction
Princess Diana exhibited exemplary leadership traits as Princess. She was the first wife of the Prince of Wales (Charles) in UK. Although, she belonged to a royal family, yet she used to stay among poor people especially patients and helped them a great deal by taking part in numerous charity events. In addition to becoming Queen of a royal family, she literally got the title of “The Queen of Hearts” due to her services for the people of her country . Her death in 1997 in to a car accident in Paris, France left the world in tears, for losing such a great leader.
The research paper will cover three aspects of the unique and grand leadership style of the Princess Diana: Moral challenges, moral reasoning and moral leadership. The first aspect of her leadership will explore the difficulties while performing noble causes and helping others. We will see how she infused new life among the poor people in UK during the last quarter of the 20th century by raising funds for various threatening diseases. Moral reasoning involves in-depth analysis of the complex situations during leadership and the decisions taken to overcome challenging situations expressed in the first facet of the leadership. Such reasoning will include justification for decisions taken in various situations. In the last phase of leadership analysis, we will see how the leadership acts of Princess Diana lies among famous leadership theories and practices. The true spirit of her leadership will be revealed.
Moral Challenges
Princess Diana was born in 1961 in a royal family of Great Britain. In spite of all the luxuries, she entirely changed the role of the royal family. Princess Diana was one of the true leaders who don’t dictate their subordinates. She was, in fact, a servant leader. She regularly visited people who needed her compassion the most. The biggest challenge for Diana was to use all her resources to extend help for disenfranchised, disabled, lonely, sick, dying, abused, and neglected people . She regularly visited hospitals, taking care of patients, suffering from life-threatening diseases. Her heart and soul resided in serving orphanages and centers of disabilities
Diana was never afraid of difficulties while meeting her objectives and goals of helping disenfranchised people. She completely dedicated her soul to serve humanitarian welfare work. Her vision was focused on serving the distressed people of the planet. She extended whole-hearted support for patients suffering from intimidating diseases like Leprosy and AIDS , during the times when AIDS patients were isolated due to fear of spreading the virus.
Another mountain for Diana in life was to overcome her psychologically depressing feelings due to her private life. Her marriage wasn’t successful due to affairs of her husband. It led to emotional distress in her mind. However, she didn’t allow these discouraging feelings to overcome her leadership role and she found great strength in helping others . She was very insecure in her private relations that triggered her desires to help others and find satisfaction in taking part in various noble causes.
Diana was especially against devaluing people due to social norms and cultural behaviors. She took the ethical challenge of becoming the voice of the marginalized people of the nation. She introduced a special way of leading the people. She inspired her followers to show compassion and empathy for week and neglected people.
She belonged to a royal family and could easily utilize the resources for helping the poor especially in terms of charity and other financial help. In true spirit, she was a servant leader who led UK as well as global community with noble virtues of moral reasoning and moral leadership.
Moral Reasoning
Even though Princess Diana had no shortage of wealth, but her royalty and elite status in society didn’t make her proud. She had ethically pure soul that was loaded with love, affection, warmth, and importance for poor, diseased, and disabled people. During her brief stay in the world as a leader, she took the challenge of helping disenfranchised as a noble cause . Right from her childhood, she was sensitive about the needs of lower part of the society. The clear reflection of moral reasoning of her leadership is that she was a selfless charismatic and a servant leader who was driven by rigorous concern for others.
Another aspect of moral reasoning of Diana’s leadership lies in her compassion which is beautifully referred to as an archetypal female empathy . All of her actions were oriented towards nurturing, caring, and providing assistance to the most neglected part of the society. Her efforts for abolition of landmines and treatment of young children are worth mentioning. She was very proactive in highlighting the issue of abandoning landmines to the leaders of the globe . Just a few months before her death, she had a meeting with the member of the Clinton administration for convincing them to favor “Oslo” conference abolition of devices . Clinton was quite impressed by her approach as she raised the voice about abolition of landmines on world agenda. Indeed, all her actions had clear moral reasoning to serve humanity.
Princess Diana clearly knew the impact of influential style of leadership. Her actions made her quite popular throughout the world. It was her influence that drove her even after emotional setback of divorce . In an interview on BBC channel, she was questioned about her emotional character and psychological traits . It was proved that her emotionality is a positive aspect of her personality. Her strong character and spiritual wishes for humanity drove her psychological feelings in a positive direction.
Moral reasoning of the leadership of Princess Diana is obvious in the way she connected and showed respect to various walks of society . She had the ideology that everyone has a potential so he should be valued. Through her immense care for deprived, she changed the face of the world. She could easily share sorrows and sad feelings of others, being emotionally unsatisfied. During her brief stay to the world, she visited numerous hospitals and raised charity for patients of AIDS, Leprosy, and similar feared diseases. She also blew away the misconception that diseases like Leprosy spread due to physical contact. She demonstrated this fact by touching such patients herself. She also supported research efforts to combat cancer and heart diseases. She was the biggest supporter of The Leprosy Mission England and Wales from 1990 to her sad demise in 1997. She became part of the campaign for raising awareness against this disease. She was prohibited to visit hospitals by officials and the press, but she ignored all the myths surrounding the patients of Leprosy. She shook hands with them and even touched bandaged wounds . She also financially helped refugee camps. Through media and other platforms, information about early symptoms of Leprosy was spread so that patients could seek timely medical help before developing complex threatening disabilities.
Moral Leadership
It goes without saying that the respect is earned with humble and friendly behavior and cannot be forced. Princess Diana did just that. She wasn’t any kind of political leader, business giant, or ruler of a country. She was a servant leader; the one who dedicated all her energy for the betterment of mankind . She showed the whole world that patients and disabled people don’t deserve isolation. They need constant care and attention instead. She extended empathy and compassion for ignored humanity around the globe and raised awareness about it . She showed affection for everybody, regardless of his identity and status. These were the matchless moral attributes of her leadership.
The leadership of the Princess Diana exhibited true flavor of the famous theory of Utilitarianism. She pursued happiness of the greatest number of people. She believed that policies that lead to moral and ethical benefits for a large community must be followed and implemented. Her leadership promoted morality a great deal as she had a clear vision of helping the most neglected part of the society.
The matchless leadership of Princess Diana was virtue of her active campaigns against abolition of landmines and their consequences in the form of threat to lives of children. Her dedicated efforts resulted in abandonment of manufacturing of cruel weapons that endanger children health. Following her death, Ottawa treaty was signed by many nations to agree with the terms and conditions floated by Princess Diana regarding the serious issue of landmines.
The presence and attention of Princess Diana always revolved around noble causes and events that host them. She was definitely a centre of attraction due to her reputation and humble nature for humanity . Her participation in thousands of charity events raised millions of dollars for noble causes. She attended various symposiums and aided in opening institutes for helping poor and needy people . Her leadership simply followed love, compassion, empathy, and affection for humanity. She was more a servant than a leader; the one who loved to stay connected with mostly ignored people on the planet. By far, she presented the best case study of a leader who cared not only for her nation, but the global community of helpless people. Indeed, she was a global hero who was praised by the whole world .
Another positive aspect of her leadership was courage to take bold steps in the favor of disenfranchised ones. She was personally very lonely and fragile, but her psychological weakness never overwhelmed her in achieving her great goals. She depicted clearly that the true essence of leadership lies in authenticity and then it flourishes when the leaders grow by passing through their hard times . Her life is an example of a courageous leader. Those who can take on the difficult faces of society can follow her steps to achieve something bigger .
The helping nature of Princess Diana had various aspects. She also raised funds to counter homelessness problems of poor people. In this respect, she became affiliated with Centrepoint charity. This charity provided homes to young people and offered suitable jobs, trainings, apprenticeships, etc . It also took into consideration physical and mental fitness of young people. Diana held the opinion that young people are the future of the country and they must be given full chance to show their mettle. She also thoroughly supported emotionally and financially the organizations that fight against poverty.
Conclusions
This research paper focused on the leadership traits and characteristics of Princess of Wales, Diana. We reviewed the moral challenges faced by Diana throughout her life, particularly related to her leadership role. She faced plenty of hurdles in achieving her noble causes. We saw how she came out of difficult psychological and emotional situations to achieve bigger goals and objectives. Her aim was to help the ignored, neglected, patients, disabled, and poor persons of the world. In the next section of moral reasoning, we analyzed the approach of Diana as a leader and justified her actions. In the last section of the paper, we briefly discussed the leadership practice of Diana. She was a servant leader who never thought about promoting her royal dignity or values. She was undoubtedly a compassionate leader who took part in numerous charity activities for fighting against poverty, diseases, homelessness, and death of children due to issues of landmines.
Although, Princess Diana has died, yet she is alive in the hearts of millions of people around the globe. The people’s appreciation and love for Diana was clearly visible at her funeral in which a record number of people participated.
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